Chapter 11
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I never let my hopes get up too high after that. It hurt too much to feel my heart crashing down again. And angels may sing from the heavens, but no body hears the cry of those we have lost. Until I join their sorrow, their song, till I hear each note, I will not love. I will not hope. And the stars will seem dull to my even duller heart. I am empty.
Her ghost no longer haunts me. She said her goodbyes. But I will never get the chance to say mine. I did not speak another word after she misted away. I was quiet as the muffled silence of snow. And just as bleak. And cold inside. And the snow will not melt till once again her fire embraces me. She would cry for my death. So I do not attempt to bring it nearer. What if she had never gone? What would have happened? A future, a relationship… marriage? And then a cruel, ironic thought enters my mind.
Till death do us part.
If we part when one dies, then may death come to me all the sooner. I do not have a purpose, if not to hold her. I do not have breath unless she is near me. I do not live truly while her heart does not beat. But still life keeps me in its clutches. Death is relief. Death is the medicine to the side effect of life. If we could think of such an ingenious cure to life, then why not cancer? Or malaria? Or grief?
I think of all those lost, all those who grieve. Prim, rue, katniss. All those tears shed. That girl, I hardly knew her. Rana I think. Gone. With no crime or misdeed. Just… gone. And those who are left behind. The people reduced to insanity, to mindless blind hope. To denial. People like me. And the friends, family and lovers. Waiting for the news. And then realizing how they are too late for goodbyes. And it's all they can do to close the dead's glassy, unseeing eyes. For what could the dead see, if not darkness?
I think of how she looked before they cremated her. I couldn't watch as they burnt her. But when she was lying there. They had dressed her in silver. With a ring of white flowers in her loose hair. But it was almost funny how little these people knew. Katniss would not want to be confined, not in a grave, a tomb, in a little urn of ashes. Not in a dress or in pretty flowers. But I did know she'd want to remember those already gone, and those left behind. So I placed a primrose in her cold hand, and slipped a daffodil in the other. I kissed her forehead. And closed her once beautiful eyes. I noticed the little freckle shaped like a heart, that I always used to tease her about. Noticed the little scar on her eyebrow, like a crescent moon. And I held her face. I whispered to her, my last goodbyes. Then I turned and fled, tears still tracking silently down my cheeks.
They should have scattered her ashes to the wind, in the forest. But they lie still in an urn, yearning for their freedom. They should've dressed her in her hunting stuff, so she could hunt among the stars. But they didn't. And I should've said goodbye. For real.
I walk through the forest; I know where I am going. I am determined to get there. Not to cry. I think back to the good times.
Lying under a sunset, in the warm summer air. Her laugh, her turning into me, her eyes shining, feeling ecstatic, warm, breathless. And gently taking my hand, and leaning to my chest. While her heart thudding against me.
Gone.
Her trying to teach me to shoot, holding my arms in line, her breath on my face. Scoring on the edge of the target board. Screaming with glee, like a little kid. Laughing. Her turning me around, laughing so hard she was breathless. Leaning in to me, saying she loved me. Even though she hardly ever said it. Falling in love with her over again, tracing the line of her dimples.
Gone.
Her taking me by the hand, leading me into a meadow under the stars. Dancing with the silence of the night, our hearts beating in time.
Gon-
'No', I think. I don't want to be reminded it's gone. Because its not. As long as her memory lives on, she will never be gone. I realize how blind I have been. It doesn't matter that she's not physically here. My heart remembers her. I know her. She will not be forgotten.
I stand under the trees, by the lake. Where we lay on that first autumn morning. Look down at the cross made of twigs and tied together with rope. Where I carved the name katniss in the wood. And place it down on the spot where she once lay with me. And turn to walk away. Because it's not much. Not nearly what she deserves, but its what she would have wanted. For her name to stand under the trees by the lake, while the wind sings her countless lullabies.
I pass the abandoned playground. Where I pictured her to sit. I open the gate. Nobody ever comes here. You can still see the muddy footprints I made that first visit. I think of what my memory said to me.
'Will you ever forget me'?
The words couldn't come back then, but now they will.
Never katniss everdeen.
Never.
And then I gaze down at the ground by the swing. And I dare to hope once more. I see a second set of footprints. Smaller daintier then mine. That walk away and disappear. But nobody ever comes here. She said she was a memory.
But memories don't leave footprints.
